I’m pretty sure having sex with your wife in public would also get you in serious trouble. In any case, since when has the law been the ultimate arbiter of what is morally right or wrong?
“I’m pretty sure having sex with your wife in public would also get you in serious trouble. In any case, since when has the law been the ultimate arbiter of what is morally right or wrong?”
The law isn’t the ultimate arbiter. There are 2 common schools of thought on how to judge morality. The first requires reference to a universal standard of morality, traditionally the Bible in Western civilization. By that standard, masturbation can be judged immoral simply by virtue of it being a symptom of lust. The other method is to appeal to a public consensus of the society.
Now, we could take a poll and see if the majority of people think masturbation is immoral, but I doubt that would be very telling, since it’s a subject people might not answer honestly and openly about. Or, we can just look at the law, which already is a sort of measure of the public consensus as to what behavior is considered unacceptable in a society.
By any applicable measure of morality I can think of (besides the Thelemic/Satanist “do whatever you feel like”), masturbation comes up short. If you have some other standard you’d like to appeal to, by all means make your case.